Environmental Law in China

Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance

Charles McElwee, Sanders Squire, and Dempsey

Lays out a detailed explanation and analysis of Chinese environmental law

Provides the most complete guide to date for businesses, particularly foreign-operated, to comply with both national and local Chinese environmental regulations

Discusses the possible legal ramifications, both civil and criminal, of companies' failure to comply with Chinese law

Describes generally the relation between international environmental treaties and Chinese national law

Includes an overview of Chinese culture and its unique influence on the nature of the Chinese legal system

Environmental Law in China

Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance

Charles McElwee, Sanders Squire, and Dempsey

Description

In recent years, China's leaders have started to confront the environmental, economic, and social costs of unchecked development. China's increasing reliance on foreign oil has engendered national security fears and launched a drive for more efficient transportation systems and domestic renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, pressure from a rising middle class and the international community has focused leadership attention on ways to make China's economic engine run more efficiently and with less impact upon the domestic and global environment. This profound shift in priorities has elevated environmental sustainability to the top of the national agenda. To advance this new agenda, the environmental laws that China has enacted over the past thirty years are being
strengthened, and new environmental regulations and standards are being issued everyday. Entities operating in China are faced with the need to understand the impact of China's environmental law requirements upon their businesses, and to take actions to ensure that they are in compliance with those requirements.

In Environmental Law in China: Managing Risk and Ensuring Compliance, Charles McElwee addresses how China's environmental regulatory and legal frameworks are structured, how to maintain operational compliance with the environmental laws and regulations, how to ensure products sold in China comply with environmental regulations, and the potential risks and liabilities that attend non-compliance. McElwee offers unique insight into how environmental law is in fact applied,
setting forth a realistic account of the way companies encounter Chinese environmental regulations at both the local and national levels.

Environmental Law in China

Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance

Charles McElwee, Sanders Squire, and Dempsey

Author Information

Charles R. McElwee II is the Program Officer for Climate Policy at ClimateWorks Foundation. He deals with Chinese environmental officials regularly, managing an extensive suite of grants that are devoted to making China more environmentally sustainable. Prior to this position, Mr. McElwee practiced environmental and energy law at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. for nearly 30 years, most recently in the Shanghai office. He represented a range of clients in the U.S. and China in a variety of matters, including environmental, energy, and import-export issues in the People's Republic of China; environmental and energy issues related to stock and asset transactions; structuring carbon trade and NOx and SO2 allowance trade agreements; environmental due diligence; U.S.
Natural Resource Damage review; Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

Mr. McElwee is also a Professor of Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Law, where he won the President's Prize for extraordinary contribution to the University in 2009. In 2008, Mr. McElwee was awarded the Shanghai Municipal Government's Magnolia Award (the highest honor the City bestows upon foreigners). Mr. McElwee is a frequent speaker and writer on environmental law and management in China. Additionally, he is the author of the China Environmental Law Blog (www.chinaenvironmentallaw.com).

Environmental Law in China

Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance

Charles McElwee, Sanders Squire, and Dempsey

Reviews and Awards

"The great challenge in understanding China's environmental predicament involves striking balances. Finding the right balance between despair over the problems and optimism about efforts to correct them, between the ambitious principles stated in legislation and the uneven realities of enforcement across the country, between the forces inside China willing and able to work with international environmental groups and those who shun outside 'interference.' In this book, Charles McElwee offers a clear and useful guide to these balances and to China's green prospects."
--JAMES FALLOWS, National Correspondent, The Atlantic

"Charles McElwee has written a valuable and highly readable primer on China's environmental law framework that also provides important insight into the ways that the law is actually implemented. He points out that the trend in China is toward increased environmental enforcement, particularly of foreign-invested entities perceived to have greater capacity for compliance. All companies operating in China who wish to improve their environmental compliance should read this book."
--ALEX WANG, Senior Attorney; Director, China Environmental Law & Governance Project, Natural Resources Defense Council

"This book is an absolutely necessary reference tool for anyone with manufacturing operations in China. Charles's book is concise, compressive, and accurate but more importantly readable, even for non-EHS professionals. Working through China's environmental regulations is a daunting and almost impossible task, and this book provides a road-map for working through China's immense and intricate environmental compliance requirements. I wish I had this resource five years ago."
--DAYTON J. CARPENTER, Former EHS Counsel-Asia Pacific, Eaton Corporation

"This is an excellent book, written by the most qualified person I know to write it...if you are interested in China's environmental laws, I strongly recommend you buy Environmental Law in China."
--Dan Harris, China Law Blog, www.chinalawblog.com